It's OK. OVER KILL. One example of it is Senator Al Franken no longer a senator. Huh? He posed for a GAG photo? He gave a hug to a few women who were drooling and fawning to get a photo op with him? Jeeez.
What's going on now is a lot of reverse racism, reverse sexism, exclusionary revenge and really, just the same kind of preening, clique-ridden nastiness that WASPs have been accused of for hundreds of years.
Whoever is in power is going to favor their own, and right now, it's #METOO and FUCK YOU. You guys, you had it coming, so now...forget about getting your books reviewed. Oh, maybe if you're a black guy. White guy? NO.
Are there any white guys even on the staff of PEOPLE and TIME? In a position of power? In a position to say, "Hey, reviewing a few books by guys wouldn't be a bad idea..." NO.
Jamie Lee Curtis (she's a book critic because she's got a vagina, apparently) was chosen to dish on summer reading. She picked ONLY female authors:
What's the excuse here? Most people who buy books are women? Really? Women are the only ones who bought Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Camus, Wouk, Michener and all the others who were ONCE on the best seller list and NOW wouldn't even get a book deal? Because they're not women? Women of color? Or at least black guys or gay guys?
Here's Time magazine, October 14th, with a FEMALE critic giving a full page to a FEMALE author. (This was the issue with Kamala Harris on the cover, because mentioning a male Presidential candidate is SO uncool.)
Pick out random back issues of People, Time, or the awful Entertainment Weekly. It's the same deal. WOMEN ONLY. People magazine reviewing ONLY women:
TIME back in August:
September 30th 2019. TIME devotes two pages to TIME OFF BOOKS. Or, FUCK OFF, GUYS, as it should be called.
Reviewer JOSHUNDA SANDERS highlighted three books, ALL by women: Jacqueline Woodson and Tea Obreht. First off, it's possible to give succinct reviews on five or six books over two pages and at least let MORE women authors get a good blurb they can sell. It wouldn't kill anyone if ONE book was written by a male. But here we are, a female reviewer going on and on about two other women.
"...Teen pregancy is often treated like a tragedy in narratives of black life, but the lens here is more realistic: life goes on." In that case, why read about it? "Iris falls for someone, a sexy and smart young woman who stirs her more than any man ever has..." Oh, ok, now we've got a black lesbian angle to this fabulous novel. SOLD!
But not to very many men, but then again, FUCK YOU, guys. You know you still got Stephen King squatting a brick every year with some dopey horror thing. You can read a few look-alike spy books or something. Is Follett still alive? Scott Turow probably knocks something out once in a while, or Robert Crais. Good enough for ya, and they don't need reviews because for Father's Day, that's what you get Dad. (Nobody wears a tie anymore).
White authors. FUCK YOU. Is this any way to treat...a minority?
Yes, a MINORITY.
Time Magazine, October 21 2019 issue, page 38:
"People of color...make up nearly 40% of the U.S. population."
This may even include colored people. (When are they going to re-dub Stevie Wonder singing "they don't use colored people" to make it more politically correct?)
Add that 51% of the population is FEMALE, and suddenly, Mr. White Guy is actually Mr. Minority.
In the same issue of Time, they ran a helpful, hopeful piece on "Next Generation Leaders: 10 Rising Stars Who are Changing the World in politics, sports, fashion and more."
That list featured: STORMZY (black), SELLY RABY KANE (black female), AORI NISHIMURA (Asian female), LINA KHAN (female), PABLLO VITAR (of color male drag queen), AMANDA JOHNSTONE (female), ZAINAB FASIKI (female), ALEXANDER GORBUNOV (a YouTube white male), DAVONE TINES (black male) and BRIAN GITTA (black male).
Mr. White Guy represented only 10% on that list.
What we have here is a misconception that white guys are a majority, and worse, when Mr. White Guy cedes control and hires blacks, people of color, women...they'll turn around and hire their own and maybe even find a way to get Mr. White Guy kicked out entirely.
Know what? That's not really racism, sexism, genderism, it's human nature. People are rotten. Every one. White people are the only Imperialists? The only ones to take away land and act superior to the natives? Explain how the borders of South America or Africa got to be the way they are, or what's with China and Burma, or North Korea and Japan. Every race and every religion is the same in one way: they're selfish, self-important, bigoted toward their own, and rotten.
Are there exceptions? Few. One of them would be ME. Among the first books I wrote were "Cosby" (that's about a black guy) and "Sweethearts of 60s TV" (about 16 women). Why did I do that? Because I loved Cosby when I was a kid. I bought his albums. When he made his comeback with his sitcom about the Huxtable family, I wanted to research how this kid from the projects in Philadelphia became a star. I persuaded my publisher to let me follow with "Sweethearts of 60's TV," which explored the pioneering female role models who were liberated (Emma Peel, Honey West), and going out into the workplace (Ann Marie aka "That Girl" and Mary Richards).
Nobody told me "be politically correct, be a #metoo proponent." It came naturally to me. But being the exact opposite comes naturally to a lot more people. They hire their own, their only interested in their own, and they show no tolerance, curiosity or empathy for others.
Is it such a big surprise that power corrupts? What would be the odds of a black lesbian book reviewer choosing to review something by a straight white guy? What for? Besides, people of color, and gays need books they can relate to, and they sure can't do it by reading old shit from Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and THAT bunch. I got it.
I used to be a book reviewer. Chicago Tribune among others. If it interested me, I reviewed it. I was certainly NOT going to review some sappy hen's romance paperback. But if Edna O'Brien had a new one out, or Ann Beattie, or someone else who wasn't a dunce like pudgy E.L. James, I'd take a look. In fact, IF I'M BEING HONEST (as Piers Morgan loves to say), I actually had a bias TOWARD creative women. Know why? I know how a guy thinks. I'm more curious about the female point of view. So yes, I would read "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" by Betty Smith (no relation) as well as "City Boy" by Herman Wouk. PS, Betty did ok for herself didn't she? So did Harper Lee. Suddenly we have to make a SPECIAL EFFORT to ONLY publish and review works by women?
Here's TIME, July 1, 2019.
As usual, a female reviewer only reviews women and "the girls of summer" who have written books that everyone would want to read...NOT AT ALL. Not "Supper Club...dissatisified women reclaim their bodies in an unlikely club." Doesn't sound like 'Fight Club' does it? How about "Four sisters reflect on their past?" Riveting?
Mort Sahl used to say "women don't think too big." Not when they're considered with the "sisterhood." Or traveling pants. Maybe Ayn Rand thought big and Atlas shrugged? Today the playing field is not even and guys are being flattened and disregarded. If it's not a horror novel by Stephen King, it's not going to be reviewed.
Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald? They don't stand a chance when a reviewer like the one above, references Bronte, Loos and Mary McCarthy. Who are more important now? Time to throw out the WHITE MAN and his literature. The revision is that these guys weren't very good then, and are meaningless now. Do you doubt that some little bint is going to stand up in an English 101 class and demand the ban of "The Scarlett Letter?" She'll pipe up with: "A man wrote this! A MAN. What does Hawthorne know about a woman's body? How DARE he write about a Scarlett Letter?" And what's her choice to replace the Hawthorne book? "How about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants!!!"
Am I that far from the truth? I don't think I am. Am I being asked to review books for major newspapers and magazines like I sued to? No, I am NOT.
Suggest that white male authors should at least have a MINORITY's share of the pie, and ONE in SIX books reviewed over two pages of TIME and PEOPLE be reserved for them, and it's blasphemy. If you mention Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner (and I promise NOT to do it again) you'll be countered by ANGELOU, MORRISON and WALKER. And damn, if you don't add Hurston, Butler, Giovanni or Hansberry, you a racist, and an ignorant fish-eyed fool, too.
Isn't it odd and rather disgusting, that at one time, nobody even gave a rat's ass about such matters? They really didn't. Truman Capote was as flamingly gay as you could get, and he wrote "In Cold Blood" and people bought it because he was a good writer, PERIOD. They bought Gore Vidal and Allen Ginsberg, too. They bought Angelou and Morrison and Walker, too. And James Baldwin. The book world was, at one time, pretty open and liberal and non-exclusionary. So WHAT happened?
I might write a book wondering what happened to the white heterosexual writer, and why Henry Miller or D.H. Lawrence or Philip Roth are nowhere to be found and pudgy E.L. James gets an entire table for her idiotic garbage. (PS, Anais Nin and Pauline Reage were better and nobody made a big deal about it). Yes, I could write a book...but I don't have 7 syllables in my first name, I'm not gay, not of color, not female...so forget about it being reviewed, it wouldn't even be published.
And that's why there are blogs. (And gee, you didn't have to pay to read this. And I didn't get paid for writing it. What a perfect world.)
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